Motif
by Tall on the Inside
Summary: You've lived thousands of lifetimes with her, but she's only lived a handful of them with you.


tw: mentions of suicide, rape and character death

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**Motif - **_ A recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work  
_(n.)

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You've lived thousands of lives, no two the same, except for the fact she's always there. She's been with you the entire time. Unlike you, she doesn't remember the eternity the two of you have spent trying to find each other, but she rarely does. Once or twice you might have seen remembrance dance across her sea-green eyes, but she's never truly known.

You have. You've known in every life that you're a shell without her. You've never known who 'she' is exactly, until you finally meet her. Every time that you do cross paths, that's it. You know. You're lost to a flood of memories, of timelines that never met, an infinity spent together, but not spent _together_.

In most lives, you are you and she is her. Your eyesight is always poor, her fashion sense always questionable. These are constants. There is only one other constant, and that is the fact that you are never together, not the way you should be, and not for long.

When you dream, you see those lives play out before you once more. Lives where you are a prince and she is an Empress. Lives where you grow up together and drift apart. Lives where she dies. Lives where you die. Lives where she kills you and lives where you kill her. Hundreds upon thousands of stories you remember, but she is ignorant to.

In every life, you love her. In most of them, she returns the feeling. In some, she doesn't.

There's one life where the two of you are alien children. You're closer than any pair of friends could ever be but you want more. She doesn't. She wants nothing to do with you. She leaves you. She gives her heart to another.

You kill her in that life.

There's one where you're a girl and she's a boy. She works in a coffee shop. You fall in love. You also get hit by a car.

You're star-crossed lovers who can't be together due to family rivalries; you die together. You're children gifted with the power to bend water; she sees you as nothing more than a friend. She's the Professor who teaches your Marine Biology course; you have a brief affair and you're convinced she'll leave her family for you, she calls you delusional and moves, along with her husband and two kids. You're a pirate and she's a mermaid; you fall in love and set her free. She's an exchange student who sits beside you in Maths; you date briefly before she's sent home. She's the princess of a country your father wants to ally with; the two of you are betrothed but she runs away to be with some commoner. You're the mayor of a small down and she's your wife; she's burnt at the stake for witchcraft. She dies of the Plague. You drown. She shoots you twice in the chest and once in the head. You hold her as she dies in your arms. She has cancer. She doesn't love you anymore. Her father finds a better suitor. You're already married. Your fall is fatal.

The lives where you die are bad. The lives where you never meet are worse.

She's an Olympic swimmer, you're a teenage boy who wins a competition; you shake her hand once and never meet again. You're a businessman on a flight to Germany, she's an air hostess; she gives you peanuts and a smile. You're the author who wrote her favourite book. She's the model your sister idolises.

There are lives where you kill yourself. There are lives where she kills herself. There are lives where you kill each other; at the same time, in one. Every one of these skip through your thoughts and you wonder where you went wrong. You feel like you're falling into a pattern you can't break. You're starting to feel like your only focus is to find her.

You wonder if that's all life is. Maybe everyone is trying to find the same one person again. Maybe everyone is reborn and you're the only one who remembers it.

You're not crazy. You know you're not. The feelings that swell up inside you whenever you see her make you certain. It's not just love, it's the love of thousands of you who never had the chance to give it to her properly.

In this life, you thought you did it right.

You study film and literature, she studies biology. You were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. At the time, you'd both been in relationships, but you saw her and knew it was her. Even though she was shorter than last life. Even though her eyes were blue-ish green unlike the pink-ish brown you saw so often. Even though her hair was blonde and her skin was pale where they were usually much darker. She's curvier in this life, her body not the muscled streamlined shape of an avid swimmer's. She's introduced to you as Elizabeth Pysgodyn and instantly insists you call her Effie. You shake her hand and murmur your own, not as impressive name, Eric A. Daniels.

For a moment, you think she remembers. Her smile is the same one she's worn a thousand times, though it sits on a different face.

Your girlfriend kicks you out of the house; you were always fighting anyway. You bought your own home, and one night she shows up out of the blue, tears streaming down her face because she thinks its over between her and the scum she's been dating. You let her in, she pours herself a drink. You hold her and tell her she can do much better than that stupid computer-hacker.

She kisses you, and you kiss her back.

The next thing you know she's touching you in places she hasn't touched in lifetimes, and you're touching her in ways you've dreamt of for too long. Her mouth in on your mouth and then your mouth in on her neck and your covering each other in kisses, brushing each other in soft, gentle caresses, embracing, and you know some part of her remembers, because the love she's giving you isn't just her love; it's the love of a thousand of her who never had the chance to give it.

She doesn't regret it in the morning. Neither do you.

You date. You kiss and touch and love each other with all of your being. She wants to marry you and she says so. She demands you go buy her a ring right that second. You ask her if she wants to wait; you're barely twenty-five, with your whole lives ahead of you. The look she gives you makes you feel like she's the one who has waited lifetimes for this moment, and you're the one with no clue.

Her ring is fuchsia. She's always liked that colour.

Yesterday, you were lying in bed with her arms around your waist, and her drowsy rambling about the wedding dress she picked out with your friend Kaya and her friend Natalie slowly falling in a diminuendo before she becomes silent with sleep.

Today, you sit in the living room of your friend Karl's house, whiskey in one hand, and fix your dead gaze on the floor while he mumbles an argument with his blind wife before she eventually assures him that she will see justice prevail.

Eventually you'll give evidence in court to Kar's wife, the head prosecutor. The court will find the man you've taken to trial guilty, and he'll receive twenty to life for his crimes. People will thank you. They'll call you a hero for having the will to speak in court, after what you've lost, and they'll feel indebted to you and Teresa for helping put an end to the reign of terror the man had created.

After that, you'll visit her grave. You'll lay down the bouquet you bought for her. You'll tell her how her death helped lead to the capture of a serial rapist. You'll tell her how no one else will have to suffer what she did that day, how his crime are over and he'll never kill again. You'll tell her that the families of all those other victims are at peace now, all because she was brave enough to fight back, because she somehow managed to send you a picture, because you could identify him, because Kar made you press the matter and his wife was an amazing lawyer.

You'll put your head in your hands and sob, and promise her that next time will be different.

It won't be. Next time it will be her sobbing over your grave.

But the time after that? Who knows. You have an eternity to get this right.

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**author's note: **just something quick to help me get out of my writer's block.  
I had no idea where I was going with this wow sorry it turned out so sad  
I don't even ship FefEri and yet I always want to write it? a true mystery  
yeah this was going to have a happy ending but I'm me so yeah it ended up sad  
idk how long it will take for the next chapter of observations to come out because I'm working on my chapter for a collab fic so I will probably start it when I'm done with that

thank you for reading


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